Recipe Review: King Arthur's Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've been putting off doing some true, from-scratch, gluten free baking for a while now. I've been baking for a long time and I have always loved it but this entire world of gluten free baking scares me. Have you seen some of the ingredients? Therefore, I've mostly only baked from mixes up to this point. 

As I've mentioned in past posts, among other things, I've made some brownie and cake mixes with mixed results. I've used gluten free Bisquick with very mixed results. And, more recently, have played around with Pamela's flour blends and mixes with better results. The Pamela's baking has been as close to from-scratch baking as I've gotten up until now.

Enter King Arthur's Gluten Free All Purpose Flour. I bought a box of this shortly after I was diagnosed, way back in June. I used it recently in my mac & cheese but I've really been wanting to get into some of that baking I miss. Ya know, the "throw a couple sticks of butter on the counter to soften and make sure you have enough eggs and brown sugar" kind of baking. At least that's how it goes in my house as I'm always running out of brown sugar and eggs. Why hadn't I dug right into this box of flour? What was I afraid of? King Arthur ruled my baking world prior to my diagnosis. Their catalog comes to my mailbox. I've been to their store a couple times. I only bought King Arthur brand flour. I always referenced their website and cookbooks for recipes. Why did I think they would not come through in my new, gluten free world?

Well, I decided it was time to find out if the King would continue to rule. I knew the brownie mix was amazing. Like, "is this really gluten free?" amazing. Would the chocolate chip cookie recipe be as amazing?

For the most part, yes. It's pretty darn good. 

I read through the recipe and also, the reviews. King Arthur's site is great as they have their staff respond to some of the negative reviews. Usually it's with offers of troubleshooting via their 1-800 number but sometimes they reply with troubleshooting tips right there on the review and that, to me, is invaluable advice. Especially to a new baker or to like me, a new-to-gluten-free baking-baker.

In reading the reviews, I learned that a couple reviewers were having issues with an ever present problem with gluten free baked goods, grittiness. What I loved was one of the descriptions of the residue that the cookies left in your mouth that was described as "microsand". Yes, gluten free food is so much fun to eat and describe. The King Arthur staff left some feedback about the xanthan gum and I had an "a-ha" moment. They're not only one of my favorite 80's band, a-ha moments are very helpful in gluten free baking too. 

The directions for these cookies instruct that you refrigerate them for at least an hour or up to 2 days. I get it, I can do that. However, I can see why some may be tempted to skip that step, we want cookies NOW. This does seem to be an integral part of keeping the cookies as grit-free as can be, as I learned from the staffer who commented on the review. I do love to know the reasons as to why I'm doing things and while I understand you can't explain EVERY single step in a recipe, things like this would be good to know. The staffer explained to the reviewer that refrigerating the dough helps to hydrate and activate the xanthan gum, reducing it's grittiness. A-ha. I don't know a lot about xanthan gum and I have a feeling I don't want to know about it. I will investigate that another day. But, now I know the longer I refrigerate the dough, the more I may reduce it's tendency to be gritty. 

The cookies were very typical to throw together. You beat the butter with the sugar, add the dry ingredients, add your chips. You have cookie dough. You refrigerate. You bake. You have cookies. The only two things I changed were that I used dark brown sugar and I added about 1/3 cup more of extra chocolate chips since I skipped the nuts. The light brown sugar I had was possibly cross contaminated since my husband had made apple crisp and I don't know if he double dipped with the flour measuring cup he used. 

I always have a rule when I bake cookies. You must taste them at every stage of warmth, right out of the oven and right through to room temperature. Here's how it went.

Out of the oven-

You could taste a bit of "microsand". Although, I would liken it more to a wheat germ texture. It almost tasted like a sneaky mom threw some wheat germ into the cookie dough to make this treat just a wee bit more healthy for her youngins. The cookies were good though. Very Toll House-ish. Homemade goodness was there, for sure.

Still warm-

The cookies continued to taste like mom was being sneaky with the wheat germ but now the cookie was firming up and it was really tasting so good. Woo-hoo. Baking from scratch can happen in a gluten free world and taste good. 

Room temp-

I'm definitely making these again and King Arthur is going to at least rule my gluten free chocolate chip cookie world. Wheat germ texture is minimized as it's cooled but still there towards the end of the cookie. The butter flavor is wonderful, it really shines through. I'm not sure these would completely fool anyone who isn't gluten free because of that bit of a wheat germ texture. In every other way they are the real deal though. Soft, chewy, chocolate chippy...so very good! 

Making this recipe has given me hope. Every time I play in my new gluten free world and have a little success, I have hope. My world certainly didn't end when I got my diagnosis, not even close. However, for those who know me, they know how very much I loved my world of all things baking. Celiac disease felt like a pretty cruel diagnosis for someone who loved to play with flour as much as I did. I truly enjoyed baking and to know that my hobby was wrecking my insides kind of blows my mind at times. 

However, I am learning that I can still bake. This little experiment here is proof. It's certainly not the best chocolate chip cookie I've ever had and I'm definitely limited to what I can do with my mixer (that I bought at King Arthur, by the way) but time will certainly help me to develop my abilities just as it did with wheat flour baking. It took years for me to learn the basics there so that I could venture off on my own and get creative. I just have to be patient and learn all over again, one basic recipe at a time. One down, many more to go!

Gluten Free Homemade Mac & Cheese

I was going to just throw together a post on this quickly last week. I had a photo of this dish that I made a month or so ago and thought it was time to share it. Easy, peasy...write it up and publish it.

Then, I got a hankering for mac & cheese since I'd been thinking about putting it on the blog. I made it last Friday night with the ingredients I had on hand, which were different than the ingredients that I used in the picture I had, and it turned out so wonderfully better! While it looked the same, it tasted SO much better. I'm so glad I waited to write this.

When I first started playing around to make my tried and true mac & cheese recipe gluten free, I was using corn pasta and Trader Joe's gluten free all purpose flour. I really like corn pasta, a lot. It's most definitely different than wheat flour pasta but I appreciate it for what it is. Much in the way a chicken burger is different than a beef burger but I really like it for what it is...a chicken burger. 

This combo of corn pasta and Trader Joe's gluten free all purpose flour was good. My son does not appreciate homemade mac & cheese, he'd rather have the stuff in the box, but my husband thought the gluten free version was good. He had no problem eating it at all. I even made it when we had friends over for a cookout. They all ate it, even the kids, and I didn't notice anyone leaving it on their plate uneaten. I had been satisfied with that new variation of my favorite recipe until last Friday night. 

I started poking around in the cupboard to see what kind of pasta I had on hand. I had a lot. Trader Joe's, Sam Mills and Wegmans' corn pasta in various shapes. Gluten Fee Bionaturae pasta which is made with rice, potato and soy in a couple different shapes. Tinkyada brown rice pasta in one shape. The Tinkyada was calling to me. No reason, it just was. The only other time I'd used their product was for lasagna. It was hardly noticeable that it was gluten free. At one point my husband said, "I assume this is gluten free because you are eating it?" Yep. Love it when that happens. It's not like I'm kidding anyone because they know I'm not going to cheat so if I'm eating it, it's clearly gluten free but when it's not obvious, it makes me very happy. 

Onto making the recipe. I used the last of the Trader Joe's gluten free all purpose flour a while ago so I was now into my box of King Arthur gluten free all purpose flour. The box is open with a little bit used. I can't recall what I used it for. There's not much gone at all so it was nothing significant so I'm considering this my first time using it. 

Usually I wouldn't tell you what brands to use in a recipe. I will tell you what I use and why but that's only my suggestion. I suppose the brands in this recipe are my suggestions also but I will have you know that using the Tinkyada pasta and the King Arthur gluten free all purpose flour has made the best version of gluten free homemade mac & cheese that I've made yet. 

The Tinkyada pasta had a really good texture for his dish. It was soft without being mushy. Corn pasta tends to be a bit more chewy, I guess you could say. It's good, don't let that description turn you off to it. The softer texture of the rice pasta just seemed to work better with this recipe. 

The King Arthur gluten free all purpose flour made a much smoother sauce than the Trader Joe's gluten free all purpose flour. King Arthur's website does mention that you can bake without "grittiness" so I'm not sure if they do something special to it to lessen that tendency or if it's the combination of flours and starches that they use. At any rate, whatever it is, there was a noticeable difference in the smoothness of the sauce. 

You can most certainly make this without using gluten free ingredients. This was the first mac & cheese recipe I made and it's still the only one I make. I found it in an old Betty Crocker cookbook from the late 80's. My mom bought it and decided she didn't want it shortly after she purchased it so she gave it to me. It's what I started cooking out of in my late teens. There are a few recipes out of the book that I still go to, this being one of them. The book is a disaster, it's been loved a lot over the years and has all the stains, splatters and splashes on the pages to show for it!

Gluten Free (or not) Mac & Cheese

Adapted from an old Betty Crocker Recipe 

6.5 ounces of uncooked, gluten free (or not) pasta (1 to 1-1/2 cups)

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup gluten free (or not) all purpose flour

1 3/4 cup milk

8 ounces shredded sharp cheddar cheese

salt and pepper, to taste

gluten free (or not) bread crumbs (optional)

additional shredded cheese (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Boil the pasta according to package directions to the al dente stage. The pasta will be baked again later so you don't want it to get too mushy with all that cooking. Drain pasta and set aside. 

Melt butter over medium heat. Once it's melted, add the flour and stir until combined. 

Slowly start to add the milk while whisking it in. If you add it all at once it will be hard to get it all incorporated. Once you have the milk all poured in and combined, stir frequently and bring the mixture to a boil, still over medium heat. Once the mixture is boiling, continue to boil and keep stirring constantly for 1 minute. 

Remove from heat and add the shredded cheese. Stir until cheese is completely melted. Add salt and pepper to your liking. I usually just add a little salt to help bring out the flavor of the cheese. 

Add drained pasta to the cheese sauce and stir to thoroughly combine. Once combined, pour into a baking dish. An 8x8 baking dish works well, as does a medium round casserole dish or a medium oval baking dish. You can now top it with gluten free (or not) bread crumbs and/or additional shredded cheese if you'd like to. 

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until bubbly and the top is golden brown. Or, however well done you like the top of your mac & cheese.

Homemade Gluten Free Hamburger Helper

Do you like Hamburger Helper? It's okay to say, "yes". There's no judgement going on here from my end. I'm doing a whole blog post on it so I have no room to judge. I won't tell anyone if you do say, "yes". Your secret is safe with me.

If you did say, "yes", definitely keep reading on. You don't even have to be gluten free. I started making this as a non gluten free recipe and just decided one night that I wanted it so I adapted it to be gluten free, which wasn't hard at all.

I'm not quite sure how my mother ever convinced me to try Hamburger Helper with as picky as I was. She did though and it's now one of those guilty pleasures of mine. When I decided I wanted to eat a little more consciously, this is one of the things I took a look at. We didn't eat it often but when we did, I knew there were absolutely no redeeming qualities about it whatsoever and looked to see if I could change it. 

My first move was to replace the Betty Crocker brand with the Annie's brand. Annie's was made with more natural ingredients and I felt better serving it when we did have it. I was buying it at Target and then it disappeared. I would check every time I went in and it never showed back up. I was quite disappointed because it was actually so much better than the Betty Crocker brand. It had a really decent taste to it, no matter how bad it looked in your bowl. I did see it still on the shelves of one of the supermarkets here. However, they wanted over $5 a box for it. There was NO way I was paying that much for a box that had a little itty bit of pasta and a pouch of seasonings in it. No way, no how. I decided to see if I could make it at home. Of course I could.

I made it a few times and again, so much better than the Betty Crocker brand. Who knew in all those years that I'd been eating that brand that there were alternatives out there that were not only better for you, but tasted better too. When you are making it right from the start in your own kitchen, you have control over every ingredient in it and that is a huge plus when you are trying to eat more consciously. I was happy to have found my way to making homemade Hamburger Helper.

Fast forward to my current eating limitations. I hadn't thought about Hamburger Helper of any sort in a while until I had wandered into an odd lot store a couple months ago. They had a gluten free version of it put out by Sam Mills. I love, love, love Sam Mills gluten free corn pasta so I grabbed a couple boxes. They were due to expire within the next 6 weeks so 2 were more than enough. We tried it and it was pretty darn good. More like the Annie's brand than Betty Crocker in flavor. I searched around to see if I could find this anywhere else with better sell by dates but it just wasn't happening so I forgot about it.

That was until this week. I got a craving. I know, a craving for Hamburger Helper? Yeah, it happened. What can I say? I know most people crave things that are much more distinguished than slop like this. Tomorrow I may very well be craving something much more hoity-toity but for now I'm running with the Helper.

I pulled up a search for "homemade cheeseburger Hamburger Helper" and they all came up. They're all very similar but I used this one from Food.com:

Homemade Cheeseburger Macaroni Hamburger Helper  

This is what I did differently:

-The most obvious, in my case, would be to swap out the regular pasta for gluten free. I used DeBoles Corn Pasta and it turned out quite well. I only cooked it for about 8 minutes instead of the suggested 12. It was tender at that point and I didn't want to risk over cooking it to the point where it completely disintegrated. I won't be buying this brand again though as there is no mention of it being GMO free on the box or their website.

-I used grass fed ground beef. Luckily, we have a store right in our city that sells this for a pretty reasonable price. I always have a few pounds in my freezer for main meal dishes similar to this or to make a few burger patties with. 

-I used organic cornstarch so that I could be sure that the corn was not from GMO sources. It is so hard to avoid food with GMO's in them so when I can, I grab every opportunity to buy ingredients that I know do not have them. 

That's pretty much it.  I didn't bother taking a picture of it. We all know what it looks like and we all know it's not pretty. I would like to encourage you to actually try this and I'm pretty sure any picture I could take would only do the opposite. 

So, if you are a proud Hamburger Helper lover, a closet Hamburger Helper lover or just a brave soul who is willing to give something new a try, give this a whirl. If someone presented this recipe to you as a one skillet dinner recipe with no knowledge of Hamburger Helper ever existing, it might not sound too bad, right? Maybe? Enjoy!

Woodman's of Essex

I received the phone call about my celiac diagnosis on a Thursday morning. That weekend we were supposed to take a day trip up to Maine. We kind of, sort of eat our way through Maine. Don't get me wrong, we love the ocean, the rocky coast, the lighthouses...all that coastal Maine has to offer. We also love the fried seafood, Stonewall Kitchen, Brown's Ice Cream and Congdon's Donuts too.  

I contacted one of the places we go to for fried seafood because I saw on a message board somewhere that they will do your fried seafood gluten free. I was ecstatic. I wanted to confirm this though. I was new to all of this and really wasn't sure about much of anything. They got back to me right away and told me that while they can adapt their fried seafood coating to be gluten free that they do still fry it in the same oil as the seafood that's coated with flour and they cannot guarantee anything to be gluten free as flour is "flying in the air" in their kitchen. Hmmph. They fry chicken and other non seafood items in their French fry fryer for those who have shellfish allergies so they weren't able to fry any gluten free seafood in that fryer either. 

I was going to go for it since it was only a couple days after my fated phone call. However, It turned out that we did not go up there that weekend. My husband had spent the day before traveling home from a business trip and was much more wiped out than he thought he'd be. I thought I lost my one and only chance to ever have fried seafood ever again. After that point, I was not going to mess with my gluten free diet.

That was until the next time we decided to go up to Maine. I was searching around online to see, if by chance, there was any hope of finding gluten free fried seafood up that way. There are clam shacks on every corner, it seems, someone had to have gluten free fried seafood. Amazingly enough, I found nothing in Maine but I did find something in Massachusetts. Woodman's of Essex.

Most people who are into fried seafood, particularly fried clams, and who are also familiar with the Boston area, are aware of Woodman's. We had never been ourselves because there had not been much reason for us to head out that way but, I have had a catered Woodman's clam bake before at a house party. They are reportedly the creators of the fried clam. Parts of the movie Grownups was filmed there. It's a not a very fancy place at all located along a road filled with antique stores. And...it has gluten free fried seafood. 

In fact, everything on their menu just happens to be gluten free expect for their onion rings, clamcakes and sandwiches. Holy Cow! When I read this I was so flipping happy. I truly thought that I'd never find gluten free fried seafood.  

We have been twice now.  The first time we went there was shortly after I'd been diagnosed. I was still extremely hesitant about eating out. The menu on Woodman's website made me feel confident about ordering there. I was so very pleased with the ease of ordering and not feeling like I had to worry about getting sick after eating there. 

Both times we've been I indicated to the cashier that I was gluten free before placing my order. Because you get both fries and onion rings with your order, you are then asked if you would like double fries or coleslaw instead of the onion rings. I have picked double fries both times. I noticed after the cashier rang in my order that she rang in something on the cash register to indicate that the order was "gluten free". 

When it came time to pick up the order, my plate was separate from the other two plates in our order. They don't use trays, instead they use Budweiser beer boxes for your orders and mine was sitting in it's own box. The person at the pick up counter slid my box forward and told us that it was "gluten free".  

The first visit here this was so very comforting to me. I felt even a little emotional about it all. Someone cared enough to provide such an easy gluten free fried seafood experience for me! Well, for me and everyone else who requires gluten free fried seafood. I guess it wasn't just for me, but it did make me feel very special to be eating something I thought I had to give up forever.

Eating at a place like Woodman's makes you feel "normal". Completely normal. 100% normal. There's really nothing all that different about your plate than that of the person sitting next to you. In fact, because I hate onions SO very much, I'd ask for double fries anyway.  

I'm grateful to have Woodman's in my region. It's a little bit of a ride and we have to make a day trip out of it but that is fine by me.  If it were much closer I'm afraid I'd be in jeopardy of never losing this extra weight I'm carrying around. If we make it there a couple times a year it will be just perfect. I know they have a Budweiser box with my name on it waiting for me!   

Spummy

Is that a word? Well, I am making it one.

Introducing, "Spummy", the combination of spongey and gummy that describes a fair amount of gluten free baked goods. 

If you read my post from yesterday, yes...that does make 2 blog posts in a row...don't get used to it though, I had a gluten free Bisquick coffee cake in the oven. It smelled wonderful as I typed away. My son came home from school, smelled it and exclaimed, "apple crisp?". I made him keep guessing, since he was wrong, and then told him it was coffee cake when he guessed every other fall dessert. There was excitement in the air, I tell you. I'd been craving cinnamon something for a while now. A couple days ago it was cinnamon rolls. Then, after I saw this recipe, I wanted coffee cake. In between it was all the fall recipes starting to float around that all inevitably have cinnamon in them. It was finally THE day. The day I was going to have a cinnamon baked good.

One reason I made it was for dessert. I was going to make a nice dinner for the family since my husband had been traveling since late last week. He'd had a nightmare of an ordeal at the airport and there was now no way he was making it home for dinner. Now, I had to figure when was appropriate to dig in. Did I wait until he came home later and have some with him for a snack? As the day went on it seemed more and more it'd be a midnight snack if I waited, his 1 hour layover ended up turning into about 7 hours. My son and I decided to just dig in...we wait for no one when it comes to cake.

It looked lovely. Nice streusel topping. I cut into it and the cake had risen nicely, had a good looking crumb and color. The texture looked good. It did not crumble to pieces when I cut it or tried to get that first piece out that can be troublesome. You know what this is all leading up to, right?

Spummy. 

How can something that looks so much like the real thing taste so much not like the real thing? Oh dear. Where do I begin?

To start off, many of the reviewers on the official Bisquick website indicated that this cake needed moisture. I took their word for it. That Betty Crocker yellow cake I mentioned in yesterday's post was so terribly dry, I knew they were onto something. A majority of the reviewers added oil and sour cream to the cake and some substituted agave for the sugar. I did not have agave so I couldn't do that. I thought about maple syrup instead but decided to just use my regular sugar. I did add additional oil and sour cream. I read through the posts and decided on an amount based on what most were saying, a quarter cup of each. I baked it an additional 10 minutes or so as some indicated it would need and mine did, it was jiggly at the end of the recipe's stated bake time range. Are these modifications where I went wrong? It could be, but everyone who did this gave it 4 and 5 stars.  

My son took the first bite and said that the "cinnamon stuff" was good. Well, yeah...cinnamon stuff is always good. My first bite consisted mostly of cake. Um, not so good. It's so indescribable. There was no taste and again with the vanilla that it called for and again using Nielsen Massey and a little extra that I let splash over the measuring spoon like the yellow cake I had made. The texture seemed like it wanted to be normal. It almost was and then you realize it isn't the more you chew. You keep wanting it to be because as you are chewing this flavorless, spummy cake, you are looking at the piece of it on your plate and it's inconceivable as to how something that looks like "that" can possibly taste and feel like it does in your mouth.

I think the Bisquick I've been hoarding will be kept strictly for pancakes and garlic cheddar biscuits. This girl is done experimenting with things that I would have never used Bisquick for before I went gluten free. It's time to start using from scratch recipes for things like coffee cake. It's really not much more work in the end and I'm hopeful that it will taste better. I never really used Bisquick for too much before because the end product was never very pleasing to me so I'm not really sure why I was expecting something spectacular out of it gluten free.

Summer's End

Well, I made it through my first summer gluten free.  Also, blog free.  My intention, of course, was to blog more frequently but with all the summer goings on, it didn't happen since I'm not yet back in the habit of getting on here and getting it done.

Over the summer I started to do a little baking so I'm building my confidence with that.  It's been nothing complicated and a lot of it has started with a mix or pre blended flour but it's a start. Can I tell you I have 5 boxes of gluten free Bisquick in my house right now?  I'm kinda hoarding it because it helps me. This is not my preferred method of baking AT ALL but it fulfills my need to whip up some pancakes that taste like pancakes, especially when you use buttermilk in the recipe.  Currently, as I type this, I have the gluten free Bisquick coffee cake recipe in the oven with a bazillion tweaks that I mixed and matched off of the recipe reviews. We'll see what happens with that.  Some of the other things I've played with this summer are:

-The first thing I made with the gluten free Bisquick was their garlic cheddar biscuits. They turned out so nicely. A little tiny bit gritty but there was so much flavor otherwise, it was easy to overlook the small flaw in the texture. 

 -I bought Pamela's Bread Mix and made a loaf of bread. It turned out pretty decently. I think it needs something though...can't quite put my finger on what bothered me about it after eating a couple slices of it.  I love Pamela's website. The recipes are broken down by flour blend/mix and you can make a lot of things with each type they make. I'm looking forward to playing with this blend/mix more. 

  

-I love King Arthur's brownie mix.  A lot.  Enough said.

-I made a Betty Crocker yellow cake mix.  It was very dry.  It was flavorless...even though it was a yellow cake mix and you still had to add your own vanilla to it.  I use Nielsen Massey vanilla so it's real vanilla and it's good quality and I always splash a bit extra over the measuring spoon and it still had no flavor. (That's a lot of and's)

-I made biscuits using the Bakewell Cream biscuit recipe with Trader Joe's all-purpose gluten free flour. This definitely needs some work but it was edible. As I'm learning, gluten free baked goods tend to be very dry. Lots of oil and eggs seem to be used to help counter this. I'd like to play more with this because I love the Bakewell Cream recipe for biscuits.

-I did also make a recipe from Gluten Free on a Shoestring website at the beginning of the summer and had posted it here. I took it off when I noticed the font was screwed up.  I never got back to fixing it, I was having a lot of difficulty with it and was aggravated with the thought of doing it completely over. It was for a copycat of Against the Grain rolls.  They were pretty good and I've made them again since.  I will probably make them again. The only thing I don't like is the amount of fat in them but you can't have it all, right?!?

I managed to not gluten myself too much this summer. I did get sick a few times and I'm pretty sure I figured out the culprits each time. It's a hard thing because gluten hides in the trickiest of places. Restaurants are well meaning having gluten free items on their menus yet do not fully understand the major impact cross contamination can have on someone who has celiac disease.  Different varieties of the same food can have different gluten statuses. Do you know how confusing Milky Ways are?  Don't eat the original, but the the caramel and dark are okay. I can't figure out why but I sure learned there is a difference after I did some more thorough research AFTER eating the original. I thought I had it right BEFORE but it never hurts to double check again before you eat.  Lesson learned. 

I had an endoscopy in August to follow up the blood work which showed the antigens that indicated I have celiac. Seems at one time an endoscopy was the "gold standard" for celiac diagnosis but from what I've been reading, more doctors are not leaning towards that school of thought as much anymore.  My doctor was going back and forth on whether or not to do one, we did already have it scheduled before the blood results came in so she said we might as well go ahead. She was able to see "blunting" of the villi during the scope, indicating celiac damage.  She also found minor esophagitis. This was a surprise to me as I've never had a problem with heartburn. The biopsies she took did come back showing celiac so I guess that I am totally and completely official. Gold standard and all. 

I successfully went on vacation. We had planned this trip prior to my diagnosis and to be honest with you, had I known I was going to have this, I probably would not have planned to go. I was so worried I would not find anything I could eat for a reasonable price. I'm super picky too, on top of everything. A lot of challenges. I brought tons of gluten free bars with me and had a few on me at all times but only found a few instances in which I had to use them instead of a meal. I ate a lot of baked potatoes at Wendy's during the week for quick lunches and I will forever be grateful that there was a Wendy's about a mile each way out of our hotel so no matter which direction we headed out, we were not far from one. (We went to Vegas and stayed on the strip) I found a lot of the staff were super helpful at the places that were not Wendy's.  I don't think I got sick.  I know, how could I not know.  Well, there is a thing called TMI so I will keep it to myself but what did happen, I don't think could really be attributed to what I ate since it was early in the trip and before too much restaurant food that could be suspect.  This trip really boosted my confidence with eating out. It did require a lot of planning and also, a lot of patience from my family but we made it happen without too much inconvenience. I had pizza, pasta, burgers, fries and a lot of baked potatoes...one every day!

That's a quick summary of my summer. I won't promise too much here as to when I'll blog again but do know that my intention is that there will be less time in between blogs this time around. Fall is here and the baking bug has bit me but so has the "I need to lose some weight" bug.  Perfect timing. I'll see what I can come up with for the next blog, somehow these two worlds have to collide!  

Things Are Changing At Court St. Kitchen

Wow. It's been a very long time since I've blogged. I've wanted to. I've not stopped with what my intent was when I started to blog.  I've still been seeking out a way to feed myself and my family in a better way while doing it cost consciously. 

However, things changed. I lost my oomph. I suppose this is common with blogging, in some ways. You get this grand idea to blog and then, after a while, it becomes like everything else...another thing to do in a day.  Thinking of something to make, making it, photographing it, blogging it, editing the blog, publishing it...blah, blah, blah.  It's time consuming, yeah, but I really did enjoy doing it. Something was different though. I did not only not want to do this anymore.  I lost my oomph for a lot of things. 

For the last 8 months I've been under the care of a gastroenterologist. I've had issues since I was a teenager and it was just casually diagnosed as IBS with no direction given at the time. I had a pretty bad flare a couple years ago that I sought medical help for and was given some direction at that time. Last summer things hit hard. I waited it out figuring it was just another flare. I think my doctor did too because what ended up to be such a simple and quick diagnosis took 8 months.  

I received a phone call yesterday morning from my GI, who sounds very much like Heidi Klum when she speaks.  This is all I can think of when I listen to her. She doesn't look like her but she is definitely the most glamorous doctor I've ever seen, by far.  So, you add that to the voice and it's kind of hard to believe she deals with THAT end of the body all day long!  She was calling to give me the results of some blood work. Blood work she hadn't realized we hadn't done yet in all our time together, along with an endoscopy that's yet to be done, before she sent me on to Beth Israel hospital in Boston since she couldn't figure me out with the one obscure finding that did show up in one of the many tests I've done since October 2012.

"Jennifer dear, you have Celiac." "This is why you are having problems." "I am so sorry we did not do this sooner."

What a flood of feelings. I don't even know if deep inside I knew I had it all along.  I did know that eating gluten free definitely made me feel better.  I did know that while my GI symptoms did correspond with the GI symptoms of Celiac, that they were maybe not as severe as other have them.  I did know that I have experienced a lot of the other non-GI symptoms of Celiac since I was a teenager, including the recent exhaustion and fatigue that led me to stop blogging. I just didn't want to self-diagnose. I did not want to jump on the trendy band wagon of "needing" to be gluten free for no particular reason other than it was what the current diet trend was at the time. 

Today is the day I've woken up with the full knowledge that I have Celiac Disease.  I'm still processing it all but boy, oh boy, does this throw a curve ball into my eating and the point of this blog.  Essentially, it should not be that hard to incorporate all the things I'm striving for into a gluten free diet. However, I'm not a veggie loving girl and I'm picky as all get out which means that I will struggle my way through this whole process. 

I did start to experiment with a gluten free diet towards the beginning of May. Up until a couple days ago, I'd only bought pre-made gluten free food. I've been 100% overwhelmed with the thought of gluten free baking.  The ingredients are expensive and from what I've tasted from commercially made gluten free baked goods, home baking could definitely be a challenge with limited equipment to manipulate these strange ingredients into tasting AND feeling like the real deal.  

That is where I think I will be changing the direction of this blog a little bit.  I will still incorporate the original premise of the blog into my entries but I will be working, for the most part, with gluten free foods.  I will always love baking with wheat flour but will be saving it for my family and for occasions when we can take it with us to share with others.  For now, I am content with the fact that I cannot have gluten. I know how I feel when I eat it and how I feel when I don't. It's not worth feeling like that when there are alternatives out there. Even if there were not such good alternatives, I still don't think it would be worth it to feel like that. This is what I am saying now, my first full day as a diagnosed Celiac.  Talk to me 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 20 years from now...I'm sure I'll be singing a different tune and screaming at someone to just give me a piece of REAL, crusty artisan bread or making someone's life really miserable because I want a piece of real cake but I, and whoever is in my way, will cross that bridge when we come to it!

I've got some rolls that I made the other nite so I hope to throw together a post about them soon.  They're interesting, that's for sure. Until then...thanks for stopping by and reading!  

  

Sweet Pizza Sauce

Hellooooooooo.  I am back.  I never really left but just found it hard to blog in the summer.  The fall came and I fell off track horribly with my eating, gained a bit of weight and have been resisting making anything that I felt was blog-worthy.

Although this may seem like a very un-blog-worthy recipe, I felt like I had finally found my go-to pizza sauce and wanted to share it with you.

Let me preface this recipe with a story about a little pizza place in my hometown called Pizza Oven.  Anyone who is reading this who has been away from Pizza Oven, like myself, is likely drooling at the thought of this little hole in the wall pizza joint. A trip back home is not complete without getting a tray pizza and a bucket of wings and sharing it with my mom, step-father, brother and step-grandfather.  It’s one of the most gluttonous moments I have each year.  I eat as much of that pizza as I can that night and I don’t care.  Those who know Pizza Oven know what I am speaking of.

Pizza Oven has a very sweet sauce.  One in which I’ve been trying to mimic for years.  I add sugar to my sauce and while it’s sweet, it does not have the something special about it that Pizza Oven’s sauce has.  I have never been able to figure out what it is that makes their sauce tastes like it does.  I have had a discussion with my friend Michele about this and while both of us do a lot of tinkering in the kitchen, we can’t crack the secret.

I am not going to say that this recipe is a clone for Pizza Oven but it is the closest I have ever come to making a sweet sauce that doesn’t just taste like I added a bunch of sugar to some canned tomato product.

I made the sauce and used it the same day and really enjoyed it.  It’s actually a Papa John’s copycat recipe.  I know, I know…chain pizza?  Yes.  I love Papa John’s and while there was never one really close to us, there was one that was close enough but it has closed.  There are still a couple around but are too far to drive for take-out, even this one we used to use was pushing it as far as distance.  The sauce seemed to mimic Papa John’s very well.  I had tried to mimic their dough as well and I felt quite happy with the result.

Next day I needed a quick lunch so I took a Flat-Out wrap and made a pizza with it and used some of the leftover sauce.  Topped it with some sliced up leftover sausage and mozzarella cheese and had myself a little pizza.  As I sat there and ate my pizza I could not help but notice how the flavor of the sauce had developed over night in the fridge.  There were certain bites that were very reminiscent of Pizza Oven.  Even on a light Flat Out wrap.

I then made another pizza with the sauce on a beer bread crust.  I had seen a blog using the beer bread recipe as pizza crust and thought it was a brilliant idea.  Quick and easy…no kneading, no rise time.  I had told my husband how the sauce was reminding me of Pizza Oven and as he started to eat the pizza on the beer bread crust, he did not think so.  Then, somewhere during his second piece, he declared that he understood what I was saying. 

There is something about this sauce that almost gets it.  There has to be enough of the sauce in the bite of pizza as well as the cheese being just right.  It’s going to take a lot of tweaking to make any pizza taste like Pizza Oven but I feel like I at least have a start with this sauce.  As anyone who’s had the pizza knows, their crust is a bit different too and I feel like that maybe even more of a challenge than the sauce.  No, I will likely never make a perfect Pizza Oven clone but if I can manage a bite or two of a homemade pizza that brings me to the oblivion I feel when I eat Pizza Oven, I’ll take it for now until we get back home to get the real deal.

Sweet Pizza Sauce

Adapted from:  pizzamaking.com’s message boards (which is Todd Wilbur’s copycat recipe for Papa John’s sauce)

1 28 ounce can of tomato puree

3 tbsp sugar

3 tsp olive oil

3/4 tsp lemon juice

3/4 tsp salt

3/4 tsp oregano

1/8 tsp basil

1/8 tsp thyme

1/8 tsp garlic

It’s as easy as putting all these ingredients into a saucepan, mixing them up, bringing them all to a boil over medium heat and then lowering the hear and simmering for 15-20 minutes. 

Now, I used it right away.  Of course I let it cool a little before I put it on the raw pizza dough.  However, if you read all my blah, blah, blah above you will know that I preferred the more developed flavor of the sauce after it had sat in the fridge overnight.

(If you looked at the recipe in the link I provided for where I got the recipe from, you will notice that they added water to the recipe.  I did not forget to include it, I left it out.  I felt that once I had the other ingredients together that I liked the consistency of the sauce.  I felt that adding water to it would have made it way too thin.) 

As always, a few notes about the ingredients:

Tomato puree

I could do a whole year’s worth of blogging about Wegmans but I will keep this short and tell you that I used Wegmans Organic Tomato Puree and cannot be happier that I now have a Wegmans close enough to be able to use their products.  I usually use Muir Glen which I find at Trucci’s for about $2.69-$2.89 a can.  Wegmans brand is $1.69 so I am thrilled.  I have about 6 cans of it in my cupboard right now.  This is the base ingredient for any sauce I make since I can’t do any chunk at all in my sauce.  I’m just way too picky for my own good.

Sugar

I had mentioned a while back in one of my blogs that I had spotted organic sugar at BJs Wholesale Club.  At the time I hadn’t quite convinced myself that it was worth it but have since changed my mind.  What brought me to my decision was that the sugar is unbleached and it’s fair trade.  Buying it at a wholesale club makes it much more affordable...if they did not have it, I would not be buying it.

Olive Oil

There’s nothing too special about the oil I used but I did want to note that I’ve been keeping my olive oil in the fridge.  This calls for planning ahead to use it so it can un-solidify or else you have to run the bottle under warm water which, in my opinion, is wasteful of water and the heating oil it takes to heat the water...cold temps are here so I’m super aware of our usage of the heating oil because that bill when they fill the tank up is a killer.  I had done some reading about cooking oils and feel better keeping olive oil in the fridge so it does not go rancid as quickly.  Sometimes it takes me a long time to get through a bottle and I’d always just kept it on my counter.  I’ve just started to dabble in learning about oils/fats-what’s good, what’s not so good.  I find it all a little overwhelming since everything we once thought about saturated fats is now being called out as maybe not as true as was once thought.  At any rate, as well as a few other things, I did take from my reading this tip about olive oil in the fridge.   

Ice Cream

It’s been a little bit…well, maybe a long bit….since I posted.  Summer has arrived and as a stay at home mom, that means my days are filled now with keeping an 11 year old busy.  My posts may be few and far between over the next couple of months but I am still here and will be more active with the blog once the fall arrives when I don’t feel so badly sitting in front of a computer instead of hanging with my boy.

For now, I give you ice cream.

It’s a long story as to how I came to buy an ice cream maker.  I essentially bought it to save money and to make my own low fat ice cream creations. 

Two problems with that. 

1.      It’s expensive to make your own ice cream.

2.      Low fat, homemade ice cream tastes terrible.

So the thing sat in my cupboard for about 10 years, getting no use at all.  Last year I pulled it out, sucked it up and made a couple batches of ice cream that defied the reasons why I bought an ice cream maker in the first place.  I spent the money and calories on the ingredients and made some pretty decent ice cream.

This year I pulled the thing back out when I had mistakenly bought a half gallon of whole milk…I thought I was grabbing chocolate.  I don’t usually buy whole milk so I saw it as an opportunity to make something with it.  After years of using skim, whole milk is just not appealing to us for drinking so I had to do something with it as I did not want to waste it.

I knew I had seen a recipe for chocolate ice cream using only whole milk but when it came time to find it, I couldn’t.  In my inbox sits a “recipe” folder.  This is where I put emails from the blogs and recipe sites I follow that I would like to someday make.  Today it has 710 emails in it.  I am a recipe hoarder and I need help.  Therefore, I could not find what I was looking for…even after doing a search in that folder alone.

I started hunting online for a replacement recipe.  I found one that looked promising.  It had 2 cans of sweetened condensed milk in it.  Ah-ha.  I knew I had some stashed in my cabinets from holiday baking that I never got around to using.  As long as the date was still good on it, I’d used that.  I found 1 can of it and while the date was still good, it was only 1 can.

Back to the searching.  I found a recipe but it sounded horrible.  Cornstarch Ice Cream.  Told ya.  Doesn’t that conjure up images of powdery goo?  Well, it did for me but once I started looking more into, it seemed this recipe was onto something.  You could use cream, half and half, or any type of milk.  A variation I found showed even using coconut milk.  Yay.  I had everything for it and people liked it.  Now, I just had to figure out how to do chocolate.  The original recipe I had in mind was chocolate and that is what I wanted.   With a little looking I found a couple recipes that used the basics of this one with the addition of either cocoa or melted chocolate.  And so it was, I made my ice cream.  It was good.  It was very good considering the nature of the ingredients.  The next day I made vanilla and we put berries into it.  The vanilla was good too.  I used my Nielsen-Massey Vanilla Bean Paste in it so it had lovely black specs in it.  Had I finally found ice cream that didn’t cost a lot to make and wasn’t as bad for me as the more typical kinds made with cream?  Yeah, I think I did.

Here is a picture of some I made the other day.  It’s chocolate with organic unsweetened flaked coconut and chopped Marcona almonds.  Never mind my bad photography skills.  It’s something I’m still working on and I have to admit, I’ve been itching to blog this since I discovered it and just wanted to get a somewhat in-focus picture…nothing fancy, just one to show what it looks like.

Here are the links to everything I used to get this stuff made.  I used the New York Times recipe as stated to make the vanilla.  For the chocolate I had found 2 recipes, only one of which I bookmarked.  I took the two chocolate as well as the original vanilla and did my own thing after comparing them all.  I will update the blog if I do come across the other chocolate one again.  Goodness knows, I looked and looked for it this afternoon...I did want to link it and give it credit for the inspiration.

New York Times recipe for Cornstarch Ice Cream

Chocolate Cornstarch Ice Cream

Here is what I did for my own chocolate:

2 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup sugar
3 tbsp cornstarch
pinch of salt
4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 tsp vanilla extract

As for how to make this chocolate version...I used the instructions for the NYT vanilla ice cream.  When the base was done cooking, I put the 2 tsp of vanilla in and stirred in the chocolate chips until they were melted.  I then continued to follow the NYT instructions.

If you are adding anything chunky to the ice cream, fold it in after it has been churned and then turn it into the container you will store it in while in the freezer.

Here are some notes about the ingredients I used:

Organic Whole Milk

I had originally bought Horizon Organic that day when I picked up the wrong type of milk.  For the coconut batch I used BJs in-house brand of organic whole milk.  Even though organic milk costs more than non-organic, it’s still way less than buying whole cream.

Sugar

I used regular white (non-organic) sugar but I may change that.  Recently BJs has started to carry organic sugar.  I’ve had it in my hands a couple times but have always put it back on the shelf.  I think though, if they still have it when I go again, that I will buy it for my ice cream making.

Cornstarch

I had Argo brand on hand the day I made this for the first time.  I knew it was likely ripe with GMO corn but I used it anyway.  I had bought it way before I made my discoveries and since it’s something I hardly use, I had a ton of it.  As I realized this would be a recipe that I make again and again, I decided to see if I could find organic cornstarch…I knew that would probably be the only way to know for sure that I was not using GMO corn.  I did find organic cornstarch at Whole Foods and of course it was about 3x the price of Argo but I bought it anyway.  The funny thing is, Whole Foods had Argo sitting right next to the organic as well as another common brand whose name escapes me right now.  I have to see if Argo is non-GMO but I have a feeling it is not, I know that there have been some protests of Whole Foods due to them letting some GMO products in.  I still love them though.  I know I’m very fortunate to have one near me with all the “better” choices that they do still provide.  I have emailed Argo asking them about the GMO thing and will post the response on Court Street Kitchen's Facebook page.

Chocolate

I used Nestle semi-sweet chips, again, because it’s what I had on hand the first time I made it.  As I continue to make chocolate ice cream, I will definitely be upping the quality of the chocolate.

That’s about it.  I think this is a great recipe because it makes homemade ice cream more do-able for us.  I don’t have to go out to buy anything special for it.  When I want ice cream, I just have to make sure my churning bowl is frozen and trust me, that’s enough of a challenge for me let alone having to make a special trip just to get everything I need for a recipe.  You can add whatever you want to this ice cream to make it your own.  I am loving my coconut almond variation and I have a million ideas in mind for future batches.  The possibilities with these base recipes are endless and I love that…whatever you are in the mood for can be easily done.   I am off now to enjoy a little bowl of frozen coco-nutty-almond goodness and to ponder my next variation.

I Don't Like Chili...

…but I make it anyway.  My son and husband really like it, especially my son.  I usually just make the recipe out of the Betty Crocker cookbook I have that is about 25 years old.  They tell me it’s good, I take their word for it.

Last week I found myself poking through my cabinets looking for items to donate through the Post Office’s annual food drive.  We bought some big white cabinets to put in the garage recently for the overflow of what will not fit into the kitchen cabinets.  I shop, I cram the food in those cabinets and I forget what is lurking on those shelves.  While I was in there looking for donations, I saw that I had all the makings for chili.  I knew that in the freezer I also had some chopped onion and some pre-cooked ground beef.  Even with it being mid-May, I decided to make chili anyway.  It’s not like the weather is acting like mid-May.  It was kind of like big-bowl-of-hot-chili type of weather that day.  It was decided-the boys would be eating chili for dinner that night.

I wanted to try something different this time other than my go-to Betty Crocker recipe.  I love Betty and her cookbook shows how much I love her.  Its pages are stained and stuck together from drips and drops of this and that that have splattered onto them over the years.  Last week when I pulled it from the bookshelf the cover officially came off all the way, it’s been hanging for quite some time now.  Her recipes are basic and more times than not, come out very well so Betty has had a lot of use in this house.

I started searching online for a basic chili recipe.  While I had all the makings for chili, sometimes chili recipes do have a lot of things in them that are not standard pantry items in my kitchen.  Most of them had a couple of things that I did not have so I decided to mesh together what I did have and call it my own.

When Simon came home from school I had him taste what I had concocted.  He gave me an almost thumbs up but he felt it needed more “something”.  We added a few more things and he was about 99% there of giving me a total thumbs up…he wanted more spice.  I told him we’d hold off on more spice because his father may not want it THAT spicy and that he could always add some hot sauce to his own bowl if he felt the need.

I had not intended on including this in my blog as it was a last minute thing that came to me that afternoon.  I took no pictures as I was preparing it or after we served it up that night.  However, as I got to thinking about it, this was a healthy recipe in which I was able to use some conscious ingredients in.  (I don’t know what to call those ingredients-does conscious work for you?  It’s working for me right now but I feel like there should be a better word for them.)  On the day I was about to use the last of the chili for them for dinner that nite, I decided to snap a picture and post it here.  The chili is cold in the bowl and I didn’t want to put the cheese ON it because it would be hard to get it back off and if I left it on the cold chili, it would surely melt right into it when I warmed it up for them and I wasn’t sure how that would be.  That’s the story behind the picture…just thought I’d share that with you too!

Onto the chili….

The ingredients that were used in this that were more conscious were:

NatureSource Ground Beef

I buy this at BJ’s in a 2 pound package for $6.49.  It says it is antibiotic free and humanely raised.  I know there is no real official definition for “humanely raised” so to be honest with you, I don’t know how much that means to me on this package.  It does appear NatureSource is an entity of a big beef company but I at least figure that some of the initiatives that they claim to take are at least a step in the right direction.  The beef is 85/15 which is a higher fat percent than I prefer.  However, I use this beef when I need to brown beef for things like chili, tacos, lasagna, etc. because I can then drain off the fat that’s cooked out of it.  Also, while it’s still in the colander, I run hot water over it to rinse off any residue.  As the water is running over the beef, I stir it around to make sure that I get off as much as possible.  On page 2 of this document you can see some numbers as to how much you can reduce the fat by doing this technique.

Cento San Marzano Organic Peeled Whole Tomatoes

I bought these at Price Rite.  I have to do a posting about Price Rite because on the surface it is a discount supermarket that one would never suspect they’d be able to find some conscious item in.  There’s not a lot but if you look hard enough you will find a few things there and save yourself more than a few bucks by buying them there  The can of tomatoes I had on hand also had organic basil in it as did all the diced or whole tomato products I found in my cupboard that day.  Since I do not eat chili I was not sure if basil was the way to go but I figured since I was doing my own thing anyway, my chili was going to have a hint of basil in it…it was either that or not make it and I already decided to make it.

Full Circle Organic Tomato Paste

I find this brand at a couple of local supermarkets, Trucci’s and Foodmaster for those who are close by.  It’s almost seems a sort of a generic organic brand, I guess?  Maybe not but it is usually less expensive than the more recognizable organic brands out there…at least that’s what I’ve noticed with the tomato and cereal products they offer. 

And finally, the recipe itself.  I suppose I need to give it a name?  That had not occurred to me until I just now came to the part of typing it out.  I suppose I will be real original and call it Court St. Kitchen Chili.  I know this will be a part of our kitchen though as my husband did tell me that it was the best chili I’ve made thus far.  So, that will be it…the chili that will be made in the kitchen at Court St. from now on.

Court St. Kitchen Chili

1 pound uncooked ground beef

1 cup chopped onion

1 tsp crushed garlic (I used Trader Joe’s jarred crushed garlic)

1 28 ounce can tomatoes (use what you’ve got…it all cooks down anyway whether they’re whole or diced…you just have to help with whole ones along the way by mashing them down some)

1 6 ounce can tomato paste

1 1/2 to 2 tbsp chili powder (add to your taste)

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp cocoa powder

1 bay leaf

pinch of hot pepper flakes (add to your taste)

1 to 2 tsp hot pepper sauce (add to your taste)

salt and pepper (to your taste)

2 cans red kidney beans, drained

Brown ground beef in large pan over medium heat.  When it’s done you can drain it or drain and rinse it as I mentioned above.  Return the drained beef to the pan, add onion and garlic.  Cook until onions start to turn translucent.  Add the next 9 ingredients and stir to combine (everything excpet the beans).  Bring this mixture to a boil, reduce heat to simmer, cover and cook for about 90 minutes…do at least this, if you need to let it go a little longer, so be it. Stir this occasionally as it simmers.  Add both cans of drained kidney beans to the mixture, turn the heat up a bit and cook through until the beans have warmed through. 

This makes a fairly thick chili so if you’d like, you can save some of the drained kidney bean…hmmm…what would you call it…juice?!?  If you need to thin the chili down at all, add a tbsp or two at a time and get it to the consistency that you prefer.

We got about 6 servings so that made 3 meals for the ones who eat chili at our house.  It was great to have the leftovers in the fridge for a quick meal on the days that afterschool activities bring us home right at dinnertime.  Just make sure that you cover the bowl if you warm it up in the microwave as it spatters and makes a mess of the inside of the oven.